It is essential that an art critic should have a nature receptive of beautiful impressions, and sufficient intuition to recognise style when he meets with it, and truth when it is shown to him; but, if he does not possess these qualities, a reckless career of water-colour painting will not give them to him, for, if from the incompetent critic all things be hidden, to the bad painter nothing shall be revealed. ART AT WILLIS'S ROOMS (Sunday Times, December 25, 1887.) Accepting a suggestion made by a friendly critic last week, Mr. Selwyn Image began his second lecture by explaining more fully what he meant by literary art, and pointed out the difference between an ordinary illustration to a book and such creative and original works as Michael Angelo's fresco of The Expulsion from Eden and Rossetti's Beata Beatrix. In the latter case the artist treats literature as if it were life itself, and gives a new and delightful form to what seer or singer has shown us; in the former we have merely a translation which misses the music and adds no marvel. As for subject, Mr. Image protested against the studio-slang that no subject is necessary, defining subject as the thought, emotion or impression which a man desires to embody in form and colour, and admitting Mr. Whistler's fireworks as readily as Giotto's angels, and Van Huysum's roses no less than Mantegna's gods. Here, we think that Mr. Image might have pointed out more clearly the contrast between the purely pictorial subject and the subject that includes among its elements such things as historical associations or poetic memories; the contrast, in fact, between impressive art and the art that is expressive also. However, the topics he had to deal with were so varied that it was, no doubt, difficult for him to do more than suggest. From subject he passed to style, which he described as 'that masterful but restrained individuality of manner by which one artist is differentiated from another.' The true qualities of style he found in restraint which is submission to law; simplicity which is unity of vision; and severity, for le beau est toujours severe. The realist he defined as one who aims at reproducing the external phenomena of nature, while the idealist is the man who 'imagines things of fine interest.' Yet, while he defined them he would not separate them. The true artist is a realist, for he recognises an external world of truth; an idealist, for he has selection, abstraction and the power of individualisation. To stand apart from the world of nature is fatal, but it is no less fatal merely to reproduce facts.